Hi all,
if you think the word "copy" is the most important part of my mail, I
don't have any problem in modifying it.
Ivan's reply described my intentions in better words than mine, so
please read it - this might avoid even more confusion.
I don't know why misunderstanding are so easy, therefore I'll reply to
Lutz inline:
Lutz Hoeger schrieb:
Bernhard wrote:
[...]
During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as
similar to MS Office as possible. We copied their features and their
menus, used their icon colors and did everything to make it more easy
to change from a certain MSO version to OOo than to their next
version.
[...]
With the ribbon topic we started to change this as their
implementation seemed to bring more negative than positive aspects.
This really needs correction. The objective of planning and developing
OpenOffice.org has always been - and will continue to be - to ease the
migration to our product. This includes not only first-class conversion
of various legacy file formats, but more important meeting the
expectations of (existing and) new users. The latter is far away from
copying, as we've learned throughout the years, proven by a variety of
usability tests.
As mentioned above, I don't insist on the word "copy".
But I don't agree on your definition of our objective. Migration means
coming from somewhere else to OOo - improving the working conditions for
present users is our goal too, as you stated in the next phrase in
parentheses.
So I'd define our objective as "to ease working with our product" -
whether the user migrates or not.
We once stated this direction in a concept for OOo 2.0
(http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.html), and it hasn't
changed a lot since then:
---<quote start>---
"[OOo 2.0] will change its overall appearance in order to improve the
usability for the majority of non-SO/OOo customers. [...]
This concept has been written down seven years ago for the next major
release (OOo 2.0). It's focus on interoperability between MS Office and
OOo/StarOffice has been controversially discussed in the past and some
of the overshot adaptions (I try to avoid "copy") have been corrected
(like moving the page format to the file menu).
It was right for that state of our program, as it make it really easy to
migrate from MS Office to OOo.
This concept worked quite well, as it raised OOo's market share from a
marginal market share to the main competitor of MS Office.
But with our considerable market share, the public interest in open
formats and the improvements in the "new" major release OOo3, it must be
allowed to ask if this *main* focus of OOo2 is still valid.
I don't know how this topic has been discussed in the marketing project
back in 2003, but from my POV the main objectives of OOo are one of the
central marketing topics at all.
Also, "[T]he ribbon topic" as such does not exist.
Of course it does - I didn't refer to OOo, but to public recognition:
OOo didn't follow MS Office to their Ribbon concept. That was the point
I wanted to mention: We don't need to be compatible in areas where our
concepts are better than the competitors.
And this leads back to my main topic (see subject): We don't need
several single applications (or links that simulate them) -
OpenOffice.org is one integrated office program and we should promote it
as one.
Do you refer to project Renaissance?
No - you seem to be a bit oversensitive in this point.
In the opposite: Renaissance is one of the proves showing that ease of
migration is less important than ease of use and work. Therefore it
follows the (unwritten ?) concept of OOo3: We don't need to be
comparable to MS Office, we can be independent and even better!
And again (see above): No, the development of
OpenOffice.org didn't change its direction.
But it did change the main focus - and I want to support this change...
Project Renaissance just
puts more emphasis on the methods and on research, as well as uses
evolutionary approaches where ever feasible.
... like Project Renaissance does.
Again, in all clarity: We don't copy. Neither colors nor applications
nor features.
So we come back to my topic:
The application colors (even if we didn't copy, but adapted them to
every new release of MS Office - see [1]) are based on the MS Office
colors and refer to their product implicitly.
My question was and is still, if we need the simulation of different
applications or if it would be better to focus on the singularity of our
product.
[...] As for a strategic marketing plan, it is
critical this is not being based on false assumptions or strongly skewed
summaries of OOo's overarching objectives.
... and on concepts valid for a previous version of OOo.
Please let's make sure we are
all on the same page about this.
I thought we are (even if your mail shows a nearly opposite position to
Lars)
Best regards
Bernhard
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